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Independent single from the 'Fireworks' era (1998).

You have to really like 'Rainy Nights' to go anywhere near this single. Enough to listen to it three times in a row, first in a slightly snipped radio edit that's all but indistinguishable from the real thing, and the third and final time as an instrumental lap of honour that actually works better than I imagined. Unfortunately, while it's a good enough song, I'm not as fond of the material from the 'Fireworks' era this hails from, though it's interesting to see what is essentially a B-side that didn't make it onto the final album (apart from a bonus track in some versions) being so lavishly treated here.

For being an original, non-album song, this is automatically more valuable than the singles that merely re-use material available elsewhere, but also unlike other singles it's a little too self-consciously "singley," by which I mean it sounds like it was composed with the intention of selling to a mainstream audience. This isn't necessarily a bad thing of course, and many of Angra's softer songs lend themselves to a mainstream audience (with a bit of editing here and there), but the poppy chorus and steady drum beat keeps this rooted in a style that Angra doesn't usually go in for, despite the continuing presence of the band's usual trademarks such as the overblown orchestra and the rock instruments.

Overall, this is a bit of a throwback to the sound of the first album 'Angels Cry' which was rooted in an eighties metal mentality, but was also a lot more progressive. The first two tracks here are more or less exactly the same, with only the editing out of repeated bars, and the instrumental version doesn't really work in the way that no instrumental can really work when you're already familiar with the original song; you're just waiting for the vocals to kick in, and the whole thing seems lacking for being based around a typical verse-chorus structure. It's still quite atmospheric though, and the sweeping violins are pretty, it's just odd how overboard the band have gone on milking this piece of original music as much as they can!